Eat Donuts, Sleep, Read

For our Columbus Day trip this year, we drove to New York to visit my parents and siblings. You know those IndieBound bookmarks that say “Eat Sleep Read”?  That pretty much sums up the weekend.  I was still knocked out from a cold I got in September, and I spent 25 hours sleeping it off between Saturday morning and Monday afternoon.  When I wasn’t sleeping, I visited the Village Tea Room with my sister, an Italian restaurant in Gardiner with my parents, got a bunch of take-out with Stephen, and had Sunday brunch at my parents’ favorite bagel place.  I finished up my September book and read through all of my mom’s back issues of Real Simple and O.

On Monday, Stephen and I went apple-picking (and zinnia-picking, and cider donut-eating) with my mom.  It was an overcast day, but the foliage was sparkling and the view was magnificent. 

We got Macouns, Cortlands, a couple of Empires, and one of the last few Macintoshes on the trees.  No Deliciouses, Red or Golden, because I dislike their texture and find them flavorless.  And their name seems like a marketing stunt, like naming Greenland “Greenland”.  I’ll be the judge of deliciousness.

Stephen thought the Goldens were pretty good, though.  Here he is eating one.

Afterward, we went to the farm stand and bought half a dozen cider donuts for the long drive back to Cambridge.  They were warm, fresh out of the donut-maker, so Stephen ate four of them in the first twenty minutes.  I can’t blame him.

When we did this around the same time last fall, I wore shorts and a t-shirt.  Hard to believe that now.  It was way too cold for that this time.  It feels like we transitioned very quickly from late summer to late fall this year, weather-wise.  I like it when October has warm days and chilly nights.  But this past month—in eastern Mass, anyway—it was just plain chilly.  We’ve already had snow twice!     

Maize

I’ve been in corn mazes before. A farm near my parents’ house grows one every year, and I’m always surprised by how disorienting it is. The paths are so narrow that you have to walk single-file, and the plants obscure and muffle everything outside the maze. It’s the perfect setting for a horror movie.

I also got lost (for a couple of minutes) in a real cornfield once, while playing tag with friends. It was late fall, and the plants were withered and brown, the stalks crackling around our feet. As we scattered in all directions, I got turned around and couldn’t figure out how to get out again. Eventually, I stood on my toes and looked toward the horizon. I saw the ridge that borders our town to the west and remembered that I’d come from the opposite direction. I turned and ran to safety.

So I’m no stranger to cornfields. But the maze we visited earlier this fall in Sterling, Mass, was by far the most elaborate, confusing, and complex I’ve ever seen. This eight-acre monstrosity took us over an hour to navigate. Apparently some people stay in all day, finding all the different paths to the exit. It isn’t creepy—the paths are wide and the maze is staffed by helpful people who’ll point you in the right direction if you get frustrated. There’s even a snack bar halfway through. We went with a large group that split up at the entrance; I stuck with Stephen because he is an excellent navigator, and was able to get us out in a flash once I was ready to leave (read: tired and whiny). He must have a compass, an atlas, and a topographic map hardwired into his brain—he almost never gets lost. If we drive somewhere just once (even if I’m driving and I go the wrong way or we turn around a bunch of times or it’s dark or whatever) he remembers the route forever.

I really don’t understand it. I mean, I’ve gotten lost at IKEA.

Which is why I don't go into cornfields alone anymore.

Brimfield

I'm not sure when I first heard about the madness that is the Brimfield antique show, but it's been mentioned to me several times since I moved to Massachusetts. The show is held three times a year, in May, July, and September. Finally, this month, I got a chance to go with Stephen and his parents.

Wow.  So much stuff!  Great old pine cupboards, pie safes, woodworking tools, luggage, boats, lanterns, jewelry, snowshoes, quilts, toys, butter churns, candle molds, fur coats--everything your grandparents and my grandparents and some of the stuff that their grandparents had.  Literal acres of stuff.  I'm glad I didn't have much money to spend, because that helped me filter out a lot of what we passed.  My only regret was not being able to afford a few yards of the vintage French ticking fabric we saw midway through the afternoon.  Like I need more fabric. 

I did get these great old shoes in one of the clothing tents for $5.  The proprietor had been carrying them around to show after show and couldn't find anyone they fit, so she threw them on the sale table.  Yahoo!

Such bargains are dangerous, though. I have trouble passing up any clothing that fits and is on sale, and I've got overburdened dresser drawers and several bulging boxes of shoes to show for it. I'm trying to pare things down a little. I took a bag full of underused stuff to a clothing swap last week and managed to walk away with just two new shirts. I've got a few nice things left that I don't wear much, so I made an appointment to consign them at a local second-hand store next month. The store offer consignors a discount if they spend their earnings there, which sounds like a recipe for disaster (of the not-making-any-money-and-buying-more-stuff variety), but my intention going into this venture is to put more thought and care into buying fewer, nicer things.  We'll see how that goes. 

I do like these shoes, though.

Locavore

We had a breakfast-for-dinner party before school started this month.  The impetus for this celebration was a package of bacon that my sister and brother-in-law got us from a farm near their house.  I've been a semi-vegetarian for eight years (vegetarian from 2001 to 2008, pescetarian for the last year), but I decided that this gift of very special meat--local, cruelty-free, organic, reputedly delicious-- constituted an exceptional circumstance.  There was far too much of it for Stephen and me to eat on our own in a single meal, though, so we invited a few people over and made a local food feast with sliced cantaloupe and roasted onions and red potatoes from our farm share.  The waffles weren't local, but they were heart-shaped and delicious, thanks to Stephen's waffle iron and the apple pie spice our friends brought for the batter.

The drinks weren't local, either, although the limoncello was organic.  This is one my favorite warm-weather drinks: limoncello with cranberry juice, lemonade, and soda water.  Something with coffee might have been more thematically appropriate, but the menu was thrown together with what we had in the kitchen an hour before dinner, so we didn't have time for too many artistic flourishes.  We covered the table with butcher paper and lit beeswax candles in jelly jars for atmosphere.  I love the smell of beeswax.

I'm surprised to see us eating different foods out of our farm share this year.  Last year, we tried (though didn't particularly like) the kohlrabi and fennel, but ignored a lot of the boring staples.  This year, we've given away a lot of our weirder veggies (yes, I do think fennel is weird--that licorice smell!) and feasted on the everyday stuff: carrots and carrots and more carrots, eggplant, kale, garlic, potatoes and onions.  Mark Bittman has helped us out enormously with thinking of new ways to cook the same old stuff.  We've had fried brown rice with bok choy, stuffed kale leaves with fresh mozzarella, baked quinoa with potatoes and whole cloves of garlic.  We're definitely not true locavores, but we're doing what we can here and there.  I'm glad that the modern sustainability movement is becoming more moderate in its demands: eat less meat, eat local more often, buy organic when you can.  It's a lot easier to adhere to guidelines like those than to cut whole swaths of the supermarket out of your life.  I do try to avoid the Cheetos aisle, though.

Nap Time

I spent 24 of the last 48 hours sleeping.  What I thought was some weird new autumn allergy last week turned into a full-blown cold on Saturday evening.  I’d initially hoped to have recovered in time for work today, but ultimately spent the morning (and a good chunk of the afternoon) snoozing. Luckily, I don't have a fever, so I think I can safely assume that it's not the dreaded H1N1.  Iggy seemed to enjoy the company, even though I slept through most of the day.  He sat at the foot of the bed until I woke up at 2pm, then retired to his new favorite hang-out, the box that our digital bathroom scale came in.

I broke my self-imposed quarantine to go see The Informant! last night with Stephen and his parents. (Sorry, fellow Somerville moviegoers—I hope I didn’t infect any of you.) I don’t usually take note of movie soundtracks, but I thought the music added so much comedy to the film. Matt Damon just amazes me. How can the same person play Jason Bourne and Mark Whitacre with equal plausibility? (Acting, I guess.)

On a side note, if I haven’t mentioned this before, I love the word “movie”. It’s so old-fashioned. “Remember when we used to go see those still pictures at the theater? But now they’ve got these new ones that move!” I’d like to bring back the term “talkie,” too.

O New England

Well hello, End of August. The last month has been a whirlwind: a week and a half in Nantucket, a weeklong trip to Maine, a weekend wedding in New Jersey; over 24 hours of driving, three ferry rides, a bus trip, and a 45-minute flight on a plane the size of a large van. I also wrote two papers, participated in a mock press conference, handed in a group project, and squeezed in nine days of work at the office. August was a lot of fun.

There were some un-fun parts, though. Our car started making funny noises when we pulled off the highway in Maine, and we ended up spending a good chunk of the week finding a mechanic on Mt. Desert Island and getting it all back in working order. (By the way, if you’re ever in this bind, we highly recommend this place—the guy was great, invited my whole family back into the shop so we could see what he was doing, talked to us about health care reform, let Stephen listen to different parts of the car with a stethoscope.)

And there was the supremely uncool matter of having to write a paper while on vacation yet again. This is one aspect of grad school that I will not miss: all of the assignments tend to come due right in the middle of August, when my family and Stephen’s are on vacation. It was particularly difficult this year because the house where we stayed in Maine didn’t even have electrical sockets in some of the rooms--just a single light fixture that was wired directly into the wall. It was a beautiful old three-story house with wide porches, tons of windows and lovely old wooden furniture, but the electrical system had clearly not been updated in at least half a century. Which is what I usually like in a vacation house—something a little rustic, a place with history—but it’s not an ideal setting in which to conduct internet-based research.

There were awesome parts, too. The weather and water were warm enough to go swimming several times in Nantucket, and I rode a bike for the first time in years. In Maine, the weather was cool and crisp. We walked around Jordan Pond and spent a foggy afternoon in my favorite garden. On Saturday, we sat near the shore and watched huge waves caused by Hurricane Bill crash on the rocks. (That was before this happened, which might have given us pause.) And I got to catch up with friends from college (and do a lot of eating and drinking and dancing) at the wedding in New Jersey.

This morning, it’s rainy and cooler. The oppressive heat has finally broken. I find myself, surprisingly, starting to anticipate fall weather and the turning of the leaves. I’m not 100% ready for summer to be over, but I’m getting there.

P.S. The title refers to this great song. And since we're on the topic of the Decemberists, this video is pretty cool, too. And if you think that's neat, wait til you see this.

What's Up, Doc?

So it turns out I don’t have osteoarthritis after all. At least, the physician’s assistant at my doctor’s office no longer thinks I do. She diagnosed OA when I complained of knee pain at my physical last November. I think her exact words were, "Well, these things happen as we get older." Thanks a lot, lady. I'm 26!

Anyway, I tried her suggestions (ibuprofen, rest, ice) and didn’t see any improvement. If anything, the pain got worse, so I went back a couple of weeks ago for another exam. The PA twisted and pushed my joints around to test the ligaments, but everything seemed sound. You know when you have a health problem, and then you can't replicate it once you get to the doctor's office, and you think they think that you're making it up? I was worried about that. But then, right before the end of the appointment, my left knee started to swell up rather noticeably. Thank you, knee! So nice of you to cooperate. As a result, the PA gave me a requisition for some X-rays and a referral to a hotshot orthopedist in Boston. In the meantime, I’ve got this Ace bandage, and a new potential diagnosis: patellofemoral syndrome.

I must say that I’m relieved by this development. Not that I won’t end up with OA eventually--it runs in my family, and most people encounter it as they age, so I almost certainly will at some point. But I hope to live another decade or two before that happens.